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A New Earth

A New Earth

Postby Theophilus » June 7th, 2009, 6:37 pm

The Bible ends with God creating a new earth to replace one which had been destroyed because of the sins of its inhabitants. A careful reading the the first chapter of Genesis shows that it begins in the same way.

The Bible begins with the statement that God created the heavens and the earth. But the next verse describes an earth which is imperfect and needs work done on it to make it suitable as a habitation for humans. There is no indicator of time in the second verse to show if this is still the time of the original creation or a description of conditions at a later time. If this is still the same time as verse one we would have to conclude that God created an imperfect world and then had to do some more work on it. It seems more likely to me that the world was created perfect but something happened to destroy this perfection. It seems probable that the condition of the world was one of the consequences of Satan's rebellion and the six days are not the original creation but the restoration of the world to its original state of perfection.

This view eliminates some of the alleged discrepancies between the Bible and the results of scientific research. Those who believe in a young earth say that all of the fossils of extinct animals are the result of the flood in Noah's time. The problem with this is that God told Noah to take two of every living animal onto the ark, and there are so many kinds of animal fossils that Noah could not possibly have had room for all of them. It seems more likely that most or all of these fossils were formed in God's original destruction of the earth. It is evident that when he restored the earth he didn't make as many kinds of animals as he did the first time.
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Re: A New Earth

Postby john » June 7th, 2009, 6:55 pm

Or you could go with the idea that God took material from other worlds he created (long dead) to create the earth, which would explain the presence of old fossils of creatures that never existed on the earth.

That was the thinking of a Mormon scholar named Cleon Skousen, who wrote a book called The First Thousand Years.
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Re: A New Earth

Postby Bluegoat » June 7th, 2009, 7:54 pm

I think that reading it as a moment by moment play is a mistake, generally. From God's point of view, there is no process, he acts eternally and completely. Time exists only as part of the created universe.

But is the only purpose of the universe and creation to have people on it? If there is a process whereby the universe develops in some way, who are we to say that development is not as good and holy and reflective of God's nature as the end state of that development? That would imply that creation was somehow imperfect up until the ed of the world - after all, it continues to change until it is finished. Do roses only exist to bear some relationship to humans? I think that is manifestly not the case, in fact, I think that humans may exist partly so that roses can be appreciated as things in themselves.

The Bible, naturally, concentrates on the human perspective, human concerns, and human actions. I don't think we can assume that all of God's purposes are therefore related to humanity - he simply doesn't feel the need to tell us the other parts of his plan, perhaps it is none of our business. I think that there is a tendency to try and interpret Christianity through a kind of Hegelianism that is very misleading.
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Re: A New Earth

Postby friendofbill » June 7th, 2009, 11:10 pm

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Re: A New Earth

Postby Jesse Hove » June 13th, 2009, 5:43 am

More importantly a renewed Earth means that the final judgement is not just about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, but a tangible earthly understanding of God putting the world to rights like that of the prophecies in the Old Testament like Isaiah 11.

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